Any move that attacks a hostile king is known as check.
Tuesday, October 15th
The hammering on my door came at 6.30 P.M. Johnnie Vulkan was standing there looking angry and sad.
‘Come in,’ I said. I turned round to find him still glaring. I glared back but since my eyes were slits he didn’t detect it.
‘I’ve been to the police station,’ he said. His cashmere overcoat was slung over his shoulders and the sleeves hung limp like broken limbs.
‘Really?’ I said like a man trying to make polite conversation. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve been given the third degree,’ he said. He ran a hand through his grey hair and looked around my room for hidden policemen.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘You must have done something to irritate them.’ I began to dress.
‘Irritate them!’ he spoke loudly. ‘I work for your Government for one thing.’
‘Well, surely you didn’t tell them that,’ I yawned. ‘Are you sitting on my tie?’
‘Of course not,’ said Johnnie. ‘I didn’t tell them anything.’ He was getting angry. ‘They’ve been asking me all sorts of questions’ – he looked at his huge gold wristwatch – ‘for four hours.’
‘You must be gasping.’ I poured him a drink of whisky.
‘I’m not,’ he said, which was odd, because he downed the Scotch like a man dying of thirst. ‘I’m not hanging around here,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to Berlin.’
‘Just as you say,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to help.’
He gave me a spiteful look. I said, ‘Come along, Johnnie. Either tell me what it’s all about or don’t tell me at all, but you can’t expect me to believe that the police took you to the station because they didn’t like the way you parted your hair.’
Vulkan sat on the bed. I poured him another drink and my wristwatch alarm sounded. ‘I came down here to consult a man. I went to see him last night. He lives in Spain.’
I tried to look like a man who is just listening to someone else’s trouble to be polite. ‘This man,’ Johnnie went on, ‘I was in the army with him.’
‘In the concentration camp?’ I said.
‘Yes. He was the camp doctor. I’ve known him for years. The French have got their knife into him, I suppose. When he was driving me back here, they refused him entry at the frontier and hauled me out of the car.’
‘Oh,’ I said like a man to whom it is suddenly made clear. ‘You have been across into Spain and they stopped you at the border.’
‘Yes,’ said Johnnie.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t worry about it. It’s just a routine check.’
They sounded a little bell downstairs to tell us that the dinner was cooked. I finished dressing hurriedly and Vulkan drank a lot of whisky. Dinner wasn’t any too jolly because Vulkan was miserable as sin. One of the policemen had told him that Samantha had been asked to leave the country because her papers weren’t in order. ‘What papers?’ Vulkan kept asking and I really couldn’t tell him.
‘Everything has gone wrong on this job,’ said Johnnie after the coffee had arrived. He stretched his legs and studied the toes of his expensive Oxford shoes. ‘I try to keep everyone happy …’ He made a surrender motion with the palms of his hands.
‘Try to make everyone happy,’ I said, ‘and you’ll wind up a rich mediocrity; but you’ll never get anything done that is worth doing.’
Johnnie stared at me for a long time, fixing me with his eyes until I began to think he had gone off his trolley.
‘You are right,’ he said finally. He went back to studying the toes of his shoes and he said, ‘You are right’ two or three more times. I poured him coffee. He thanked me, still in this abstract mood, then he said, ‘London will be mad at me now?’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he said. He moved his arm like he was trying to throw his hand away. ‘Messing about down here on my own affairs instead of being in Berlin when you needed to know about the name on the document. Sometimes I feel I’m not cut out for this life. I should be writing music, not having a one-man war with London. London could murder me.’
‘London has no personality,’ I said. ‘Believe me, I know them very well. They’re just like one big computing machine. Put a success story in one end; money and promotion come out the other.’
‘OK,’ Johnnie interrupted. He fixed me with that glare again. ‘They want this man, Semitsa – then, by God, I’ll get him.’
‘That’s the boy,’ I said, but I don’t know how I got any kind of enthusiasm into my voice.